The ACT government's claim this week that the release of a spreadsheet containing information about nearly 30,000 workers' compensation cases was not a privacy breach was extraordinary.
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The spreadsheet - which includes the claimants' birth year, gender, employer, injury date, mechanism and location of injury, payout cost and weeks incapacitated - provides detailed information that makes it easy to link the so-called anonymised claims with individuals.
But Special Minister of State Chris Steel on Thursday said the government was not aware of a specific privacy breach. An internal review would suffice.
For a government that regularly cites privacy as a reason to withhold information the community ought to have access to, it was an unfathomable claim.
Health authorities have in the past refused to release the number of people who died from influenza in a given year, and the suburb-by-suburb breakdown of COVID-19 cases. They cited privacy concerns.
The vaccination status of a man in his 40s who died from COVID-19 was also classified this month due to privacy concerns. Never mind the fact it would have offered the community no way to identify him.
But the release of nearly 30,000 workers' compensation claims to the public, uploaded to the ACT government's public procurement website in 2018, is apparently not an issue.
Mr Steel said the spreadsheet had been anonymised before its release, which was signed off by the then head of the ACT Treasury in consultation with other senior officials.
"The spreadsheet was heavily redacted prior to release so that the identity of workers' compensation claimants could not be determined," Mr Steel said.
But Canberra Times reporters have been able to identify people from the data within the spreadsheet. People who work with compensation claimants said the level of detail was enough to identify people.
Scrubbing names and addresses is not enough to protect people's identity. Much greater care needed to be taken when handling this sensitive health data.
Instead of waving away the issue, and passing it off to a so-called internal review, the government needs to admit the error of releasing the spreadsheet. Then, it needs to work to rebuild the community's trust in how it handles personal information.
Citizens need to be able to trust their governments with their information. Mistakes will be made, but they should never be made twice.
Privacy is a real issue, not an excuse to use when seeking to avoid scrutiny or the release of information that can't be linked to an individual.
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